Dry Maritime weather prompts burn bans, creates challenge for farmers

The dry summer weather is continuing into August for much of the Maritimes and the conditions have triggered a complete burn ban throughout New Brunswick.

“Right now we have the entire province closed,” said Jeffrey Betts, provincial duty officer with the Department of Natural Resources in New Brunswick.

“We’ve had quite a dry spell, intermittent thunder showers. We’re picking up a few lightning strikes here and there and we’d just like to be safe and keep it closed until we get a major rain.”

Most of south-west Nova Scotia and Halifax Regional Municipality are under the same sort of ban, while the rest of the province is subject to burn restrictions.

In Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, the dry weather is making it difficult for some farmers to keep up.

“If you’re a new farmer or smaller farmer and don’t have the infrastructure to put water on, it’s a hard summer,” said Josh Oulton, president of Horticulture Nova Scotia and owner of TapRoot Farms.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "If you're a new farmer or smaller farmer and don't have the infrastructure to put water on, it's a hard summer," said Josh Oulton, president of Horticulture Nova Scotia and owner of <a href="http://taprootfarms.ca/">TapRoot Farms</a>.

“Our farm has some infrastructure but we don’t have enough infrastructure to cover everything so we kind of have to triage what needs water and what doesn’t need water. So you can lose crops in the dry.”

Oulton says while the dry weather can be great for certain fruits and vegetables, it can also place an added burden on farmers trying to keep their crops from drying out.

The dry weather can be both a blessing and a curse for local vineyards.

“For an established vineyard it can actually be a good thing. We get very flavorful, concentrated grapes as long as the vines have a big enough root system to tap into that water way down deep,” said Simon Rafuse, winemaker at Blomidon Estate Winery.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "For an established vineyard it can actually be a good thing. We get very flavorful, concentrated grapes as long as the vines have a big enough root system to tap into that water way down deep," said Simon Rafuse, winemaker at <a href="http://blomidonwine.ca/">Blomidon Estate Winery</a>.

“The issue we run into is planting new vines. We have a number of vineyards we planned to plant so far that we haven’t been able to because the topsoil is just too dry. There’s not enough moisture for them to root. So we’re still holding off where normally we would have planted them two months ago.”

The Department of Natural Resources in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are advising residents to check their websites for burning restrictions in their area.